Jill Sommers, who served as a commissioner at the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has joined the board of directors for FTX US Derivatives. In a Thursday announcement, crypto exchange FTX US’ derivatives arm said Sommers had become its latest board member in a seeming move to increase the company’s regulatory efforts. Sommers served
Regulation
The bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius is facing more legal issues as disgruntled clients are taking action to recover their funds after the platform froze withdrawals in June. An ad hoc group of 64 custodial account holders at Celsius on Wednesday filed a complaint with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York
The government of Indonesia returned to its plan to set up a digital assets exchange, publicly announced first time back in 2021. A so-called “crypto bourse” is planned to be established by the end of 2022. According to DealStreetAsia, Indonesia’s deputy trade minister Jerry Sambuaga confirmed during the NXC International Summit 2022 in Bali that
Lawmakers in California State Assembly 71-0 passed the Digital Financial Assets Law, also known as AB 2269, on Tuesday, Aug. 30. The bill is now in the hands of the state’s governor Gavin Newsom, who will either set it into motion or veto it completely. This bill requires digital asset exchanges and crypto companies to
Authorities with South Korea’s customs service have reportedly arrested 16 people involved in illegal foreign exchange transactions connected to crypto assets worth roughly $2 billion. According to a Tuesday report from South Korean news agency Newsis, the country’s customs authorities plan to prosecute two unnamed individuals linked to the illicit transactions, impose fines on seven
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) announced Wednesday that it had devised a set of six licenses tailored to nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that are based on the model pioneered by Creative Commons. Like Creative Commons licenses, there is a range of rights available through a variety of the proposed NFT licenses, titled Can’t Be Evil
There are more than 1,400 DApps in operation and their number is growing rapidly, according to a United States Federal Reserve Board discussion paper dated in June but released on Aug. 30. Ethereum is their biggest host with 470, or 31%, of them. Those decentralized finance (DeFi) products represent a very small share of the
Karl Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia in the United States, has announced that his office has sued business intelligence firm MicroStrategy and its co-founder Michael Saylor for charges related to tax evasion. In a Wednesday Twitter thread, Racine announced a lawsuit against MicroStrategy and its previous CEO Michael Saylor, claiming that he
Christopher Hamilton, a British national allegedly connected to Cryptoqueen’ Ruja Ignatova’s cryptocurrency scheme OneCoin, reportedly faces extradition to the United States on charges related to a scam going back to 2014. According to a Tuesday report from legal news outlet Law360, a judge in the United Kingdom will allow the process to move forward for
Studies show that most people who attempt to wash trade nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are unprofitable. But that doesn’t stop them from trying, which makes it a glaring regulatory and enforcement issue for the industry. In wash trading, manipulators buy and sell an asset between themselves to create the appearance that the asset is in higher
Georgia, one of the world’s most cryptocurrency-friendly countries, is moving to introduce new crypto regulations to pursue its ambitions to become a global crypto hub. Georgian lawmakers have prepared a new regulatory framework targeting digital business and cryptocurrency trading in the country, Georgian Minister of Economy and Vice Prime Minister Levan Davitashvili announced. Davitashvili said
Brian Shroder, the president and CEO of Binance US, received a federal letter requesting the urgent disclosure of official documents that prove the exchange’s adherence to various investor-centric safety protocols. The request comes from a Subcommittee chairman under the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In the letter addressed to Shroder, Congressman
Paraguay’s president, Mario Abdo Benítez, vetoed a bill that sought to recognize cryptocurrency mining as an industrial activity on Monday. He reasoned that mining’s high electricity consumption could hinder the expansion of a sustainable national industry. The decree stated that crypto mining uses intensive capital with low manpower usage, and therefore would not generate added
United States House of Representatives member Tom Emmer has reportedly suggested that regulating and encouraging innovation in the crypto space should not be a political win for either Democrats or Republicans. According to an interview released Tuesday by Axios reporter Brady Dale, Emmer said many of his colleagues in Congress were treating cryptocurrencies as a
Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, announced enforcement actions against the chief technology officer of crypto exchange Bitkub, who allegedly used insider information around the purchase of Bitkub Coin (KUB). In a Tuesday announcement, the Thai SEC said it had fined Bitkub chief technology officer Samret Wajanasathian 8,530,383 baht — roughly $234,000 at the
Regulators are tasked with balancing between protecting consumers and creating environments where entrepreneurs and the private sector can thrive. When markets face distortions, perhaps due to an externality or information asymmetry, regulation can play an important role. But regulation can also stifle entrepreneurship and business formation, leaving society and its people worse off. The United
With more institutions joining the Web3 space, regulation has been identified as one of the trickier challenges that can either smother creativity or become a catalyst to broader adoption. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Jaime Baeza, the CEO of crypto hedge fund ANB Investments, shared the challenges of managing funds in the crypto space, opportunities
Russia may soon be taking a cue from Iran by using cryptocurrencies for imports, according to commentthe Russian prime minister. The adoption of digital assets is necessary as a “safe alternative” for cross-border payments, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin declared at a strategic session on the development of the domestic financial system on Tuesday. The
The saga of the defunct Turkish crypto exchange, Thodex, continues as its fugitive founder is now in custody in Albania. Local law enforcement detained Faruk Fatih Özer in an operation carried out at 05:30 AM (UTC) on Tuesday, Aug. 30, in the country’s capital city Tirana. According to a report by Cointelegraph Turkey, Özer is currently
Singapore-based crypto lending firm Hodlnaut was placed under interim judicial management, a form of creditor protection program, by the Singapore court on Aug. 29. The court orders came three weeks after Hodlnaut froze all trading activities and withdrawals on its platform citing a liquidity crisis. In an official blog post on Aug. 30, the crypto